ENG 512: Special Topics Seminar
Cross-listed with 400-level courses, for graduate credit. Additional academic work required of graduate students. Registration requires a proposal and permission of the Director of Graduate Studies and the faculty member teaching the course. May be repeated twice for credit when content varies.

English 410/512: Flannery O’Connor
Dr. Jean Cash (cashjw@jmu.edu)
M 4:40-7:10PM
This course will, in a seminar format, provide comprehensive study of the life and work of Flannery O'Connor, a major Twentieth Century novelist who, in only about fifteen years as a writer, produced short stories and novels of classic dimension. Motivated to write both to fulfill herself and to promote the cause of Roman Catholicism in a primarily protestant nation, O'Connor used Regional settings, grotesque characters, comic dialect and Satirical humor to draw the interest of her readers so that they might ultimately experience the thematic force of her vision. Course requirements include frequent oral presentations, four formal papers (750 words each), and a 2,000 word research article for undergraduates. Graduate students will write the formal papers (1,000 each), teach two O’Connor short stories, write a book review, and produce a 3,500 word seminar paper.Note: Registration requires a proposal and permission of the Director of Graduate Studies and the faculty member teaching the course.

ENG 620: Studies in Renaissance and Early Modern Literature: John Milton
Dr. Bruce Johnson (johnsoba@jmu.edu)
Monday 6-9PM Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes in detail, a quick survey of the prose, and an analysis of Comus and the early poetry, all with an emphasis on Milton’s immersion in the events of his time. Texts: Eds. Kerrigan, Rumrich, and Fallon. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton; A.N. Wilson, The Life of John Milton.

ENG 630: Studies in Restoration and 18tth-Century Literature: Gender & Sexuality in Restoration and 18th-Century British Literature
Dr. Dawn Goode (goodedm@jmu.edu)
Wednesday. 5-8PM
This course surveys English literature from 1660 (the date of Charles II’s restoration to England’s throne) until 1785. Acknowledged by scholars from a variety of fields as a transformative period, the eighteenth century and its literature embodied notions of gender, class, and sexuality that shifted from fluid and circumstantial behaviors to codified identity categories. Our task for the semester will be to excavate from our selected texts the intense gerrymandering of social identity construction that occurred throughout the period. We will consider such figures as the libertine, the fop, the molly, the man of feeling, the masculine woman, the domestic woman, the cross-dressed woman, and the romantic friend. We will examine how the movement from the public individual to the private, the burgeoning of the British empire, the growth and power of the middle-class, the cultural investment in the moral education of men and women, and the changing nature of literary production itself helped determine the formation and depiction of reified sexual and gender categories. In addition to reading primary literary texts, we will read critical essays from leading Restoration and 18th-century scholars. Along with a heavy reading load, seminar members will be responsible for at least two presentations, weekly response essays, an annotated bibliography, and a final seminar essay.

ENG 662: Studies in 20th- and 21st-Century Literature of the United States: From Little Mags to Pulp Rags: American(s) Publishing in the Modernist Era
Dr. Brooks Hefner (hefnerbe@jmu.edu)
Tuesday 5-8PM
This course examines the broad swath of print culture that appeared in the United States during the so-called “modernist era.” This period saw the founding (and failure) of countless magazines, the establishment of major publishing houses, and the negotiation of the literary marketplace by writers from the highest of highbrows to the lowest of lowbrows. Recent developments in book history and periodical studies have emphasized the importance of reading literary works with a more comprehensive understanding of how readers originally encountered them. Our object of study will be the publishing context itself, which means we will read a number of literary histories of the era, critical works that take the publishing industry seriously, and histories of major publishers. Of course, we will also delve into literary works that appeared in these contexts: essays, short stories, serialized fiction, and novels published “between covers.” Primary readings may include works by writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Dashiell Hammett, Edward Christopher Williams, H.L. Mencken, Meridel Le Sueur, Anita Loos, Hart Crane, Jean Toomer, William Carlos Williams, Michael Gold, H.P. Lovecraft, Dorothy Parker, and others. As a part of the course requirements, students will produce extensive bibliographies and presentations on periodicals and publishing houses and a final essay on a text outside our common reading that incorporates the methodologies used in the course.

English 675: Reading and Research. 3 credits. Supervised reading and research in a particular topic or field. Admission by permission of the Director of Graduate studies; may not be repeated.

English 698: Comprehensive Continuance. 1 credit. Continued preparation for the comprehensive examinations. May be repeated as needed.

English 699: Thesis Continuance. 2 credits. Continued study, research and writing for the thesis. May be repeated as needed.

English 700: Thesis. 6 credits.Six credits taken over two consecutive semesters. Graded on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory (S/U) basis.